The opening general session of this year’s American Library Association (ALA) conference in San Francisco was a feel good fest, thanks largely to the good luck and good planning that ALA demonstrated in booking Roberta Kaplan, lawyer for the Supreme Court case that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, as the opening keynote. On the two-year anniversary of that case, the Court found in favor of marriage equality, turning Kaplan’s speech into an emotional victory celebration punctuated with standing ovations.

Unglue.it, the crowdfunding platform developed to encourage publishers to make ebooks DRM-free and open access under a Creative Commons license, in January launched a beta test of “Buy to Unglue,” a new crowdfunding model that will offer ebook licenses in exchange for donations.

In June, nicely timed just before the American Library Association’s Annual Conference, Gluejar announced their first “unglued” title: “Oral Literature in Africa”. Well, now it is available for downloading in several different formats: PDF EPUB Kindle Kindle Daisy Full Text DjVu You can also read it online using the Internet Archive’s book reader. It should […]

Unglue.it, the new crowdfunding site that encourages authors and publishers to make their ebooks available under a Creative Commons license, today was forced to suspend all active campaigns, after Amazon informed the organization that it would no longer process its pledge payments. Eric Hellman, founder of Unglue.it developer Gluejar Inc., told LJ that an Amazon representative had informed them that crowdfunding, in general, presents regulatory and contractual issues that Amazon is having difficulty keeping pace with. According to their conversation, with the exception of Kickstarter, Amazon Payments will be rejecting business with all new crowdfunding operations.

A member of the founding team at Unglue.It says ebook models make us choose. And she doesn’t mean choosing which catalog, or interface, or set of contract terms librarians want — though they do make those choices, and they matter. She means that librarians choose which values to advance, and which to sacrifice.

Unglue.it, the crowdfunding platform designed to encourage authors and publishers to make their ebooks available under a Creative Commons license, was officially launched on May 17, featuring campaigns for books from Michael Laser, Joseph Nassise, Nancy Rawles, Budding Reader, and Open Book Publishers.

The innovative project is an attempt to come up with a working business model that would create widespread, unencumbered access to ebooks, and bridge the differences between rights holders and readers (including library patrons).